How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth CenturiesO'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
History
How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
O'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
Architecture, Gothic; Cathedrals -- France
The cathedral was finished by the westernmost bay of its nave, its
capacious porch, and the southwest tower, under Bishop Étienne de
Nemours (1188-1222), who had three brothers, also bishops and builders,
at Paris, at Meaux, and at Châlons, the sons, all four of them, of a
lord chancellor of France. In Noyon, Bishop Étienne was a sound
administrator; he was favorable to the municipality, regulated the
town's moneys, and built a hospital. Philippe-Auguste sent him to
Denmark to escort to France the unfortunate Princess Ingeborg, who was
to be his second wife. The bishop was buried as a benefactor in the
abbey of Ourscamp, four miles from Noyon, farther down the Oise, which
house was a foundation of Bishop Simon de Vermandois, though only
vestiges of its XII-century parts remain.[46]
During the last decade of the XIII century a terrible fire raged for two
days in Noyon Cathedral. The vaulting throughout the church, save in the
choir aisle, had to be reconstructed. For the sexpartite system, which
embraces two bays, and has six branches from the keystone of each vault
section, was now substituted the barlong plan, where diagonals cover
one bay. The early-Gothic architects took up with enthusiasm the
Normans' sexpartite plan, but after using it for half a century they
most sensibly returned to the quadripartite system as better suited to
their needs. The sexpartite vault calls for piers of alternating
strength, since on the heavier pier fall diagonals and transverse arch,
and only a transverse arch on the intermediate pier.
Noyon Cathedral had from its start planned for a sexpartite vault by
building its ground supports of alternating strength. Its piers,
therefore, became illogical when a barlong vaulting was erected after
the fire of 1193. And one regrets that it has not its original stone
roof, since the correlations in this hardy first cathedral are elsewhere
very perfect. Throughout the church are details of subtle charm. There
is a slight bending out, like a horseshoe, of the archivolts of the pier
arcade, which archivolts are severely plain. Usually from the abacus of
a main pier rise five clustered shafts to the level of the
vault-springing, two to catch the diagonals, two for the longitudinal or
wall arches, and one for the transverse arch. Noyon showed constructive
agility in concentrating its wall ribs and diagonals on a single shaft,
which meant only three clustered colonnettes from main piers to
vault-springing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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